…

Thanks….now, as dave points, we just have to wait…..

Alas, those photos are the default for the template. Had to reinstall and haven’t had time to redo the photos. Also I am planning a design upgrade and thought that might happen sooner rather than later but now I am not so sure as our designers are very busy.

Considerably better than the customer service I experienced last week calling a plant nursery where an obviously clueless employee told me they don’t have any soil. Uhmm…okay.

BTW, are those new photos I see in your masthead? Lovely.

Hey now. You are starting to sound like me. Clarity of the rules is the biggest problem. I get the impression that the Maps Team thinks the rules are objective and easy to understand.

But I am a lawyer, and I can’t figure them out. Take the business name description issue. I went so far as to DBA my business description name and even rebranded my firm, because I did not understand the rules as to this issue.

I see several law firms with different addresses with names like: “accident injury motorcycle law firm auto accident Los Angeles”, and have reported them as spam, but apparently they are not spam, even though they are not the real firm names.

But if I was to do what they do, I would be immediately removed as a “spammer”. So yes, clarity in rules and to take it a step further, fairness in enforcing the rules would go a long way to mitigate the need for a customer support system at Google.

My two cents.

It is clear that they want a totally automated system with minimal human intervention. As panzermike points out the needs for customer support would be reduced with clarity in the process and with some better help systems.

The point of my article was to point out that it is possible to automate vast amounts of the customer support process, offer great customer support and that Google could/should as well….will they ever?

Not sure what they are waiting for…but yesterday would be not be too soon for me.

55 comments/day. That is pretty significant. That doesn’t reflect the thousands that don’t know where to go for commentary.

……(after a year……still looking for improvement……waiting….waiting….waiting…..

It seems as though they realize that for many, being in Maps is literally a life and death situation. So that brings me back to the rules. It says in the guidelines you can list 5 categories. So for example, if you list an injury category, and accident category, and DUI category, etc. (and I am speaking as a lawyer of course) and then list each practice area (injury-brain injury, burn injury, etc.) (accident-cruise ship accident, bicycle accidents, etc.) (DUI-drunk driving, criminal defense, etc.)

Well I just found out that is also considered spamming. But my entire downtown location was removed in order for me to learn that. So things like “5 categories”, what exactly a “town” is (county, city, etc.), still are entirely subjective.

But in order for you to learn many of these things, you apparently have to wait for a doomsday sanction and huge loss of revenues. My thought is that if the rules are more clear, and fairly enforced (many businesses that are reported for doing these same exact things never get taken down) or if Maps does a podcast, or actually responded to the questions of business owners in a non vague and ambiguous fashion, there would not really need to be a customer service department. Crazed business owners, such as me, would stop losing weight and freaking out about their Maps listings.

The Intuit Solution is good. But my thought is that Maps would have to start charging for listings, and that would basically make every Maps listing spam, since paying for links (aka “sponsored listings”) is considered spam under the Google quality guidelines.

In closing, Maps is still a lot of hit and miss, and if you miss, your terminated. Customer service needs will be drastically reduced if the rules are clearer. This goes back to Mike’s original main problem with Maps, the rules still are simply not clear enough.